


Learning to Step

by Ruusverd



Series: Echoes of the Fall AU [20]
Category: Echoes of the Fall - Adrian Tchaikovsky, Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Bronze Age AU, Gen, Shapeshifters AU, the time skip episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:08:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26065507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruusverd/pseuds/Ruusverd
Summary: Ciri and her family make the village home, and Ciri reaches an important milestone.
Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia
Series: Echoes of the Fall AU [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1863010
Comments: 8
Kudos: 13





	Learning to Step

The rest of the summer and autumn was spent trying to prepare for winter. Since there were so few of them and their time was limited, they decided to focus their repair efforts on one of the smaller longhouses, rather than the chief’s larger one. It would be a bit cramped for space, but less to maintain and easier to keep warm.

The priest’s stone longhouse they left alone entirely. Only a day or two after they arrived the warband had been unexpectedly awoken by the crashing sounds of Geralt methodically dismantling the rusting effigy of the Wolf’s Jaws and dragging the heavy pieces into the windowless temple where the Wolf’s priests had once produced the wolf-iron. Afterwards he blocked the doorway with pieces of wood and avoided the temple so thoroughly that it became the unspoken rule for all of them to pretend the structure didn’t exist. Even Lem, who usually regarded taboos as invitations, realized no good would come of poking around. It wasn’t as if they needed to use the building, since none of them knew how to work iron and they had more longhouses to choose from than they had people to sleep in them.

The training ground that lay behind the priests’ place wasn’t subject to the same avoidance, and all the hunters among them used it regularly to keep their skills sharp. Milva taught Ciri and Lem how to shoot, Geralt taught Ciri how to fight and how to set snares for small game, and the two Plains girls continued to practice sparring against each other. Cahir was eventually (reluctantly) approved as a sparring partner for them as well. Nothing of the way he fought would be particularly useful for them to use themselves, but Geralt conceded that learning to counter his techniques would be wise.

When the winter came and the warband was forced to stay huddled together in their longhouse most of the time, Yennefer began to teach Ciri how to read and write and do arithmetic in the southern way. Lem initially scorned reading and arithmetic as “priests’ magic” unnecessary for a hunter, but eventually either boredom or competitiveness drove her to learn as well. Regis taught them some of his healing lore, simple things that they could use for the kinds of injuries a hunter tended to accumulate.

Near the end of that first winter, all of the men were temporarily exiled from the longhouse while Milva gave birth to her son. In the tradition of the Eyrie she wouldn't give him a true name until he was a few years old, but the rest of them quickly dubbed him Little Hawk. Milva loved her son dearly but her nature was not inclined towards nurturing, so the others all took turns at minding him when Milva needed to go stretch her wings and escape for a while.

Over the course of the next summer the other surviving Elder Sea wolves dropped in at various times, just as Eskel had predicted. They’d all eyed the missing effigy and the boarded up temple askance when they arrived, but none of them said a word aloud in protest. Like Eskel, Coen and Lambert weren’t willing to leave their new tribes and relocate to the village permanently, but they all agreed to come back as often as they could, and to try to coordinate future trips to meet at the same time.

The presence of their odd little tribe in the old village couldn't be hidden from the world entirely, they were too strange a group for that. Traders from the Coyote or the Crow sometimes stopped by, but no one came from the south to trouble them and gradually they concluded that the Kasra must have given up. Ciri grew, and they lived in peace for several years.

In the spring when Ciri was twelve, her sleep began to be troubled. She saw the Lion walking beside her in her dreams, the great maned cat she hadn’t seen in the waking world since Xin’trae had been destroyed, and knew that her soul had come. The Lion was not unexpected, if a bit disappointing, but the second form she could feel moving behind the Lion made her nervous. She couldn’t bring herself to look at it directly, but she knew another soul had come as well. It didn’t give her a feeling of evil and horror like the Rat had years ago, but the cold, ruthless patience of its mind was alien and totally incompatible with her own mind.

Shedidn’t mention that second form when she told Geralt and Yennefer about the dreams. To talk about it she would have to acknowledge it existed. She told herself it wouldn’t matter, since she planned to cut the Lion away and become a Wolf as soon as Yennefer agreed she was ready. Hopefully she could cut that second form away at the same time and no one would ever have to know.

On the fourth day since the dreams had started, Ciri fell while climbing a tree and landed on a lioness’s paws. It lasted only a moment before she lost her grasp on the cat’s shape, but her clothes had ripped in places where she hadn’t managed to carry them with her so she knew it hadn’t been her imagination. She ran back to the village, her excited screaming and torn clothes bringing all the adults within earshot running with weapons drawn. She had trouble calming down enough to tell them what happened, but they all made suitably impressed noises once she managed it.

“Congratulations,” Geralt smiled at the young Lioness. “How does it feel?”

“Different than I thought it would,” she said. She turned her attention inward, where she could now feel the cat soul moving inside her even while awake. “It’s… I thought if it wasn’t a wolf it would be completely wrong, and it isn’t. It feels… familiar, like it’s been there all along and I just never noticed it. I still don’t think it’s what I’m supposed to be, though. Maybe something I _could_ have been, if things had been different, but not who I _am._ _”_

Geralt pulled her into a hug. “Are you sure? It’s all right if you want to keep the soul you have, you don’t need to feel like you’re disappointing me or rejecting me by not becoming a wolf.”

She shook her head, “I’m sure. It’s close, but it’s not quite right. It feels like a round peg shoved into a square hole. It fits, but it isn’t the right shape and doesn’t fill the whole space.” She laughed against Geralt’s chest. “I’m going to have to tell Yennefer she was right to make me wait. I did need to feel it for myself, so I could know for sure how it felt.”

Geralt laughed too. “Your mother is usually right.”

"These things are known: I am _always_ right.” Yennefer had managed to sneak up on them while they were distracted. “What am I right about this time? I heard screeching all the way from the herb garden, and your clothes look like you rolled down a cliff."

"I Stepped, Mama!" Ciri bounced on her toes, excited all over again. "I fell out of a tree and landed as a lioness!"

Yennefer smiled proudly and hugged Ciri tightly. "I'm so happy for you!"

"I don’t know how I would do it on purpose though, and I couldn’t even carry my clothes with me, let alone a weapon. How do you learn to do that?"

"A lot of meditation to learn to Step," Yennefer told her. “And careful practice at taking things with you, starting small and working your way up.”

Ciri scrunched her nose. "That's boring, I bet the Wolves don't learn by meditating and starting small."

“The Wolves would probably just keep pushing you out of trees until you either broke all your limbs or figured out how you were managing to Step on the way down. We can try it, if you think that way would suit you better,” Geralt offered, his lips quirking in a way that told Ciri he was teasing her.

"Actually now that I think about it meditation sounds good," Ciri decided. She was determined to be a Wolf, but there were limits.

"I thought so. You see? I'm right again." Yennefer said, and Ciri laughed.

Yennefer had never trained someone to Step to their own form, she told Ciri, but all the Champions of the River were trained in how to use their secondary forms in the Serpent's temple. The principle should be the same, just with a much weaker soul.

Ciri learned to focus on the lioness inside her, to balance letting the cat’s instincts come forward enough to use the cats shape without letting them become strong enough to overcome her mind. She practiced Stepping with small items clutched in her hands, pieces of cloth and small beads of wood, stone, and bone, until it no longer tugged at her to carry the natural materials with her and she no longer tore her clothes. Then Yennefer began giving her items made of bronze, which was much harder to carry, but eventually she managed to carry that with her as well.

When she was alone with no one watching, Ciri held the small iron amulet Geralt had given her tightly in her fist and tried with all her might to fold it into herself when she Stepped. The cold metal refused to budge and every time it fell to the ground instead. She was determined to be able to carry it with her eventually, but for the time being, she simply practiced until it became automatic for her to not take the leather cord the amulet hung from with her when she Stepped, so that it wouldn't come loose and fall.

She practiced as hard as she could, hoping that Yennefer would decide quickly that she was ready to change her soul. The cat's soul continued to be just a little bit uncomfortable, even as she became more experienced at using it. The second soul she still hadn’t touched, and its presence became weaker the longer she ignored it. She wondered if it would gradually fade away entirely if she ignored it long enough, or if it would have too be decisively cut away. She didn’t know how to ask without explaining why she needed to know.

Even once she could mostly hold on to the lioness’ shape and move without falling over herself, she couldn’t spar or fight with her new shape very well. Striking out with her cat’s claws didn’t come naturally, and neither her father nor her uncles could offer much advice beyond their memories of fighting against the Tiger. She was also worried about becoming _too_ comfortable with the lioness, for fear that Yennefer might decide she shouldn’t be a Wolf after all.

Summer was just sliding into autumn, and she was sitting on the edge of the training ground trying once more to carry her amulet with her, when she saw Eskel’s wolf come running out of the trees. She stood up and waved to him, excited to see him but somewhat confused. He’d just left two weeks ago and didn’t usually come back so soon. Alarm started crawling up her spine when he ran straight into the village without so much as glancing in her direction. Even when the Wolves were in a hurry they would wag their tails or give her a wolfish grin in greeting.

She watched him run past the boarded-up temple towards the heart of the village, where he Stepped and started speaking urgently to Geralt. He looked tired, like he had been running hard for a long time.When he finished speaking Geralt Stepped and howled an alarm that would bring everyone within earshot back to the village. Ciri ran towards them, a heavy feeling of dread pulling at her. Whatever news Eskel had brought, she had a feeling their years of peace were about to end.

**Author's Note:**

> The climax of the story is approaching! Most of the rest is written, I'm just hammering out the details and doing some editing I think.


End file.
